


Goodwill

by Hth



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alexis Is a Good Bro, Christmas Eve, Episode: s04e13 Merry Christmas Johnny Rose, Exes to Lovers, M/M, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 20:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21021725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: I think we should focus on the business,Patrick said.It hasn't been easy.





	Goodwill

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver) collection. 

> **Prompt:**
> 
> Olive Branch ep never happened and they've been trying to just be co-workers for weeks. They get back together bc of winter: snowed in or Christmas, etc.

The forecast calls for snow, which is nice, in theory – white Christmas and all that. But Patrick's not looking forward to driving in it.

“So I think I'll leave a little early, if that's okay,” he tells David.

David is standing on a stepladder with a staple gun in one hand and murder in his eyes. He's been at war with this same swag of greenery for at least a week. “Okay,” he says. “Look – is this even?”

It's not. It hasn't been for a week. “Looks okay to me,” Patrick says, because it's Christmas Eve, and he really just wants to get on the road, and also for David to come down from there and not break his neck. “You're okay to close up without me?”

“Wait, where are you going to be?” David asks, even though Patrick _just explained_ that, just thirty seconds ago.

But of course David wasn't listening. David often isn't. It's annoying, but – what can be done about it, honestly? David is David. He's never going to change.

“At the cabin,” Patrick says again, patiently. “The house party.”

David wrinkles his nose and says, “The _cookie party_. Right. Ugh, good luck with _that_.”

“Thanks,” Patrick says dryly.

He leaves just after two, and he isn't sure how to – if they should – the appropriate –

They're friends, so. Patrick hugs him, hands hovering not quite on David's back, his wrists pressed awkwardly to David's arms. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

“Oh,” David says, and he frowns like it's a massive effort to figure out what kind of response to that is socially appropriate. Patrick's not sure what's so difficult about _merry Christmas to you, too_, but that's David Rose all over. A lot of things aren't as obvious to him as they are to Patrick. “Well. Drive – safely?”

Close enough, Patrick guesses.

They're friends, but David doesn't have a lot of friends. Of course, neither does Patrick, really – most of the friends he did have in Schitt's Creek, he lost in their breakup four months ago – but he _has_ had friends, genuine friends, and he more or less remembers how to talk to them. How to hug them.

He's not sure David ever really had those skills, but he's trying. Honestly, in his own way, David has been trying so damn hard.

Patrick has been...trying not to try so hard. He's trying to just. Let go of things he can't control, and it's not easy for him.

It hasn't been easy for either of them, but they're managing. “I think you should go ahead and take some of this stuff over to the motel,” Patrick says, stepping away. “We're not going to sell it by five.”

“I assumed we'd mark it all down for clearance,” David says. “Our customers never miss out on a chance to underpay us.”

“Take it for your folks' party,” Patrick says. “I mean – up to you. But I think it would mean a lot to your dad if you did.”

“Well,” Davids says. “I'll consider it.”

_I think we should focus on the business_, Patrick said.

It hasn't been easy.

The snow has just started to fall when Patrick makes it to the rented lodge, just enough to make the gravel drive slippery under Patrick's shoes, just enough to create a melted pool inside the door when Patrick takes his coat off and shakes it before hanging it up.

He doesn't know anyone there, but they've all been told to expect him, and they're – well, exactly what Patrick imagined Ted's friends would be like, warm and noisy and a little dorky and a little intrusive. They put rum and cookies in his hands before he's even had a chance to match names to faces. They all hug him, because they're huggers.

There's a stone fireplace and a flat-screen tv with an Xbox attached, and half the living room is piled up with luggage that no one wants to take upstairs to the bedrooms. The place smells like coffee and woodsmoke and the chili cooking on the stove, and this is fun, it's going to be fun.

He's having fun.

David would hate this. Patrick wishes that thought didn't make him feel – sad. It's been almost four months, and he's so fucking ready to be something – to feel something other than _sad about David_.

Stevie is David's friend, and Alexis is David's friend, and Stevie and Alexis are the only people David and Patrick really socialized with, which is a fact that doesn't entirely sink in on Patrick until after.... After.

It didn't seem weird at the time, because – well, truthfully, Patrick isn't quite as anti-gathering as David is, but he didn't move to Schitt's Creek for the nightlife, either. He came because he wanted peace and quiet.

That isn't what he found, or at least not entirely, but--

Well, but, wasn't it?

He used to lie in the dark and watch David sleep, one hand tucked up under his face like an overgrown child, and....

Anyway.

The point is that Stevie is David's friend and Alexis is David's friend, but it turns out that Ted is Patrick's friend, and it's been helpful to have one of those. They spent much of the fall driving up to Heather's farm together, the three of them doing adult things like assembling charcuterie plates and stargazing and mending broken goat fences and playing guitar by the firepit. God, it's been – nice. It really has been nice. To get away from it all. To be around people who aren't... who are just stable and decent and good at working hard when it's appropriate to work hard and good at relaxing when it's time to relax, people who've left the drama in their twenties where it belongs and who are busy now building lives.

Separate lives, as it turns out. Patrick kind of – saw that coming. He likes Heather, but she was never the hopeless romantic that Ted is, and Patrick doesn't think that kind of mismatch is sustainable in a relationship. Not over the long term.

Then again. What the fuck does Patrick know about the long term.

Shravan volunteers to help Patrick carry his suitcase upstairs, which is kind of a weird and transparent move. It's just one suitcase. But as soon as Patrick has that thought, he feels guilty about it. Why does he have to be so judgmental? It's a nice thing to offer. Gentlemanly.

They've been texting for a couple of weeks, mainly because Ted kind of insisted, with the endearing earnestness of a hopeless romantic who only has two gay friends. It's going – well, Patrick thinks. They talk about music and hockey, and Shravan sends him cute animal videos from his office, and they flirt in the easy way that you can flirt with someone when you don't honestly care that much how it all turns out. But the thing is, it is – turning out. They like each other.

Shravan kisses him in the upstairs hallway. Nothing fancy, just a brush of dry lips, just to see what it's like. If there's any there there.

It's only Patrick's second first kiss since he started counting, and it's--

He's not sure. It's not like the first one. But then, how could it be?

Patrick moves into it just a little, wrapping one arm loosely around Shravan's waist. He's taller than Patrick, shorter than David. He feels sturdy and muscular, with a little paunch of belly pressing against Patrick's stomach; he feels like-- Patrick doesn't know. Like a thirty-four-year-old man who lifts weights and bakes cookies and owns three dogs and a house and likes to text Patrick while watching _Scandal_.

Patrick's not in love with Shravan, but it feels good. Kissing him. Holding him. Patrick – wants that, he's realizing slowly but surely. Wants this. Wants to – move forward with his life, and meet a man who wants to be with him, and just not. Not be alone anymore.

Being single isn't really Patrick's thing, it turns out.

Maybe he's not looking at this from the most hopelessly romantic perspective, but. He's just lost so much time already, and anyway, Patrick tried romance. It made him a little bit crazy, and then it took so long to move on.

Maybe that's not really Patrick's thing, either.

_Not trusting people is what I'm used to_, David said.

Now they're both more or less back to what they're used to.

Everyone at the party is legitimately friendly, Patrick is sure – they are Ted's friends, after all – but they currently have an ulterior motive for plying Patrick with alcohol and attention. Patrick doesn't mind. He genuinely likes Alexis and is happy to talk her up. He understands why the people who love Ted are wary, but she deserves another chance.

They put another drink in his hands, and he tells them that the thing about Alexis is that people discount her, underestimate her, assume that they know her because she fits a certain mold in their minds. That no one has ever asked her to do all the things she's capable of. He tells them how she put herself through school, how she chose to want things for herself that no one ever told her she was allowed to want. He tells them that she's brave, and that maybe she's bravest when she's had to go it alone. That's rare.

He tells them how closely she's worked with her father on their motel projects. How she seems – how he knows she's changed her mind in the past, backed away from good things in the past – but how she's stood with her family through everything, how deep her loyalty runs when she really loves someone. He tells them that things weren't always – that she grew up neglected, that she grew up judged, that she grew up without a safety net, but that – it's getting better. That she's learning about receiving and giving and staying.

There were things in the past – damage was done (_damaged goods_ – Patrick doesn't call her that, it makes him ache to think that anyone could ever – people aren't _goods_, it's heartbreaking that anyone, anyone at all, could ever see themselves that way) – but it's getting better.

They give him another drink and he tells the story of Singles Week, which is genuinely a great story, touches something sentimental inside even Patrick, who doesn't know if he's a romantic, if he has that potential in him anymore, or if he ever did. He tries to do the story justice. He tries to explain Alexis Rose and her wounded courage and her big, vulnerable, hopeful heart.

He's not sure how good a job he does – there might have been one rum too many, and extemporaneous speech-making is not Patrick's wheelhouse. But he means it. He believes it.

Could she hurt Ted again? Maybe, right? Maybe, anything is possible. But Patrick believes that she deserves – that all of them deserve –

A little Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, he guesses. Generosity. Love. Hope.

What the hell, it's Christmas, right?

Last year at Christmas, David was his friend.

They're still friends, of course. But last year they were friends-and-not-lovers, friends-and-not-exes. They were – friend-friends.

Patrick bought him socks for Christmas. Nice socks, nubbly recycled wool, black-and-white speckled, so thick that they were almost slippers. David complained a lot about the cold, so it seemed practical and also personal. Friendly. Warm, literally and figuratively.

It wasn't exactly a romantic gift, even though Patrick's heart was constantly full of David's smile and David's hands and the way David made him laugh and what it would feel like--

It wasn't supposed to be a romantic gift. They were going into business together, and if sometimes David looked at him with a shy, abashed sort of interest when he thought Patrick wouldn't notice, if it seemed like now and then David was aware of him in the way that – a person like David, who's probably hooked up with friends and acquaintances plenty of times in the past – might sometimes be aware of a friend who's single and reasonably good-looking and a little bit of a mystery to solve....

Well, it still wasn't the right time to push anything. To change anything. Patrick told himself it was for the sake of the business, and the friendship.

Of course, Patrick has been known to tell himself a whole lot of things.

“Oh,” David said when Patrick gave him his Christmas gift last year, turning the soft package over and over in his big hands. “I. I didn't get you anything.”

“It's okay,” Patrick said, slightly mesmerized by the silver bow, David's silver rings, the silver bells in glitter on the blue paper. By David's face in those rare moments – was that the first moment? It was one of the first moments – when David allowed it to be soft and unguarded with surprise and curiosity. “Really, David, it's fine. I just saw this, and – I thought of you.”

Which was true. Patrick didn't mention that thinking of David was rapidly becoming the background music of Patrick's life, as inescapable as Christmas carols on the twenty-third of December.

He didn't mention that what David had already given him was more than enough, and actually on the verge of a little too much. It almost didn't entirely fit inside Patrick's life. He had no idea where he was going to put it all.

By the time the Apothecary's soft open came around in March, it took up every conceivable crack and corner of Patrick's life, and there was nowhere left for Patrick to go that wasn't full of _this_, of all the missing parts and pieces that he'd constructed his too-small, unsatisfying little life without. David, and the things David made him face, and the things David made him hope for.

By the time David's birthday came around in May, even through his fear and his pride, Patrick knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was time to break the whole damn thing down for scrap and start to rebuild, bigger this time. Big enough at last. So that's what he did.

The snow picks up all evening long. Ted sends a group text to say that they stayed later than anticipated at the Roses' Christmas party and now the weather is slowing them down even further.

It's fine. Patrick feels as at home here as humanly possible in a house full of strangers; they've all been so nice to him. He eats cookies and chili and plays Madden NFL and makes a persuasive case for Kelly Clarkson's Christmas album as one of the three best of her career. Shravan steals another kiss or two, and it's better, it's starting to feel – worth the effort.

This past year has been amazing, in every possible sense of the word, full of joy and sadness and struggle and change and drama and possibility, and lately Patrick has felt – drained. It's just been too much all at once, but he's starting to think that it doesn't have to be all or nothing next year. Maybe he can just – fill this new and bigger life with good things, with soft kisses and new friends and stargazing that doesn't feel like brooding and honesty and hopefulness, and maybe he'll get an apartment and a dog, and maybe life will go on, go forward, and David will be – his first love and his first heartbreak and his friend.

Maybe this is what peace on earth feels like. Maybe it's worth trying for, at least.

Patrick and David were never together in the winter, only four months from early May to early September.

They never bundled up under a double layer of quilts. They never slipped chilly hands under thick robes and yiped at the direct nipple contact. They never wore socks to bed. They were never snowed in.

Patrick has all those memories. He has them with Rachel. He wanted....

But the thing is that David didn't. Didn't want to be snowed in and didn't want anniversary cookies and didn't want Patrick to embarrass him and didn't want to depend on Patrick, and Patrick just – doesn't think that kind of mismatch is sustainable in a relationship.

Patrick would have chased David to the ends of the earth, would have tried to _make_ things right. David needs to be allowed to set his own glacial pace, to learn how to trust gradually. David needs patience, he needs so much patience. And Patrick has lost so many years and he can't stand the idea of losing one more.

They loved each other. Patrick really thinks that, each in their own way, they did love each other. But sometimes things just don't – work out. Sometimes your summer love just isn't the person that you can see yourself weathering the winter alongside. That's okay. That doesn't make it a mistake or a failure or anything like that.

Patrick will always be grateful, so much more grateful than he could ever express, for his summer among the Roses.

It took time to move on, but summer was worth it.

Who's to say what next year will be worth? Patrick's finally at least a little bit excited to find out.

David wears charcoal gray and sparkling silver. He looks damp and cranky. He looks around the lodge like he's not sure why he agreed to this. He looks at the moose head over the fireplace like it's crawling with worms.

He doesn't look at Patrick. Not directly. Patrick still feels like he's going to have a fucking stroke.

“Well, it was just a last-minute thing,” Alexis pleads with Patrick. “We couldn't just leave him alone in the motel, he looked so-- It's Christmas Eve!”

Patrick _defended_ her; he's never felt so betrayed in his life. “You should have told me. We both have _phones_, you could've _warned_ me.”

Alexis makes a little face like _But could I, though?_ and gestures helplessly all around her in some way that seems meant to indicate that she more than any of them is a victim of cruel fate, trapped between warring houses. “He wants to see you,” she tells Patrick.

Involuntarily, Patrick looks across the room toward David, who's propped himself awkwardly against the fireplace, clutching half a gingerbread man. “He said that?”

Alexis rolls her eyes. “I mean, like – in the way that David says things.”

“So, no,” Patrick interprets.

“Yeah, but also yes?” Alexis says. “Okay, oh my god, he doesn't _express_ himself, he's _David_. But he misses you so much. You were basically like, his only friend.”

_We're still friends_, he wants to say, but. He gets what Alexis means; it's not literally true, but he gets it. David hangs out with Stevie and Alexis and Patrick hangs out with Ted and Heather, and it kind of worked for a while, but for obvious reasons it's not going to keep working that way. Something has to change.

They have to be mature about the fact that every so often, they're going to end up at the same party. That's all there is to it.

That's all there is to it.

“I think we should talk,” Patrick tells David.

“Okay, before you get mad,” David says, “nobody told me you were here on a date until I was _in the car_. I wouldn't – if I'd known that, I wouldn't--”

“What?” Patrick says, genuinely confused for a moment, and then. Oh, yeah. “No, I. It's not like that. We're not dating, he's just – somebody I'm getting to know.”

David leans his head back against the exposed stone alongside the fireplace, staring up at the chandelier. It's made with antlers; Patrick didn't notice that before. Okay, maybe that is a bit – there's such a thing as too on-brand. “As one does while on a date,” David says.

Patrick sighs. “Look, can we talk somewhere else?”

“It'll have to be your room,” David says. “I'm supposed to sleep on the couch.”

“Take the room,” Patrick says. “I'll sleep on the couch.”

David looks away from the ceiling and tilts his head curiously. “Why? None of this is your fault.”

Why? There's no – why. It's just...what Patrick wants. “I just think I'm more used to roughing it than you are. But I don't really, I mean – let's not talk upstairs. Porch.” It's cold and wet outside, and Patrick expects David to argue with him, but he doesn't.

They sit on opposite ends of the porch swing, mostly dry under the shelter, and they watch the snow fall on the fir trees. Under different circumstances, it would be nice. Now that the moment is here, Patrick isn't sure what he thought they were going to talk about, exactly. Their feelings? Patrick wouldn't know where to begin.

Probably they should've begun six months ago.

“Okay, this,” David says, and he fishes a long box out of the pocket of his overcoat, a plain gold cardboard box with a wilted red ribbon on it. “I didn't – give this to you before. I wasn't sure if we were doing that, but. Merry Christmas.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. “I didn't get you anything.”

David shakes his head dismissively. Patrick takes the box and unseals the tape. “It's a pen,” David explains. It looks like a pen, so. That fits. “It's like the kind they use on the space station or whatever. It can write in zero-g. Underwater. It can write anywhere.”

“Thank you,” Patrick says. “I like it.”

“I didn't know what you wanted. I thought it should be something you would use. You are so hard to shop for. Where are you even going to put things, you know? You don't have a _house_.”

Patrick smiles at his impatience and doesn't point out that neither does David. “I will use it. Thank you.”

“Are you mad?” David says. “That I'm here?”

Patrick sighs. “I'm not...mad, I just. David, I see you practically every day. That's not really optimal for getting over you, you know? I thought I was – I guess, getting a break over the holidays.”

“You...seem like you're over me,” David says.

He says that primarily because David is the worst observer of human behavior that Patrick has ever known. It's – charming, somehow, the way that David seems appalled and mystified by almost anything that anyone says or does, but it's not the foundation of a solid relationship. “Well, I quit crying quite a while ago,” Patrick says shortly. “But that doesn't mean I don't still. Have feelings.”

“You cried?” David repeats, appalled and mystified, right on schedule. He's so predictable. He really never changes. Patrick misses him so damn much. “Over _me_?”

“God, David,” Patrick says in exasperation, “was there something about the desperate, pathetic way I spent weeks chasing after you begging for your forgiveness – was it confusing, somehow? Did you think I was – what, just like – _on the fence_ about you?”

At first David doesn't answer. They just sit on the porch swing, the chain creaking gently as the wind creaks through the branches of the trees outside, under snow-dark clouds that hide the stars. “Sometimes people are interested in me for a while,” David finally says. “And then it gets hard. I – I make it hard. Is what I mean. I know I. Make things hard. I came here because...I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I thought I wanted to see if you'd chase me – how long you'd chase me, I mean. And I didn't know until after you stopped that. That I never really wanted to be chased at all. I just wanted you to...go back to liking me.”

“I never stopped liking you,” Patrick says. “I just. It didn't feel like you wanted what I wanted. You wanted – an escape route. I know I hurt you. David, I'm sorry, I wish to God I'd never hurt you. But you could've...stayed. We could've worked on it. If you wanted to.”

“I did want to,” David says. “I – do want to.”

Patrick stares out at the snow for what feels like a long time. All he can hear is the creak of the chains and the nervous scuffing of David's boot against the wooden porch and the even more nervous thudding of his own heart. “If you're serious...” Patrick begins.

He could put so many conditions on this. He's learned so much about himself since last May, things he can live with, things he can't live with, things he can't live without. _If you're serious_, he could say, _then we need to start being a lot more honest with each other. We need to trust each other with all of ourselves – all of it, all the things we've tried to forget or hide or run away from, the things we're ashamed of. If you're serious, we can't just fall into first love all over again, because the thing about first love is you only get one bite at that apple. If you're serious, we have to make better choices. We have to make them together._

“If you're serious,” Patrick says instead, his voice cracking a little, “then – kiss me.”

David cups his cold hands around Patrick's face and leans into him, and they kiss and kiss and kiss.

On the hottest day of last summer, the summer that Patrick spent falling in love for the first time, Ray was out of town for a real estate conference, and to make the weather less unbearable, Patrick pulled all the sheets and pillows off his bed and out of the linen closet to make a nest on the living room floor, right under the ceiling fan. There was air flow in the living room, unlike in Patrick's room, and big windows that faced the woods, windows that Patrick could crank partially open.

He remembers the heat of that night, and the crickets singing in the woods, and running his fingers through David's sweat-flattened hair, and the way David's lips tasted like grape popsicles. He remembers David's giddy laugh as he allowed himself to be pushed to his back, as Patrick nuzzled the light fuzz on his belly, let his nose nudge up against David's ribs and the lower tip of his sternum.

“We need a shower,” David said. “We need ten showers.”

“I have an alternative proposal,” Patrick said, propping himself over David so that their chests and arms, sweat-tacky, stuck slightly together. “Let's not stop.”

“What, ever?” David said with his most dazzling smile. He touched Patrick's ribs, ghost light, his neatly trimmed nail cool against Patrick's heated skin.

Patrick kissed the corner of David's mouth, and under his jaw, and the vampire point low on his neck, and he didn't say,  _no, not ever_ . But he did think it.

“In the interest of demonstrating, um, growth and maturity,” David says between kisses, “I should tell you I – love you. So that's. Me. Being more honest with you.”

It's after midnight. The lights are all off. They're under two quilts and a comforter. Darkness inside darkness inside darkness, but Patrick still stops where his fingers are moving lightly, lazily between David's legs, searching David's face for an expression he can't read.

“Did you – hear me?” David asks faintly.

Patrick kisses him again, softer than before. “Sorry, yes, I heard you. I just.... Sorry.” In the darkness he smiles, and he presses his mouth to the side of David's face so David can feel the shape of it. David melts a little into the mattress. “This is just – you know. One of those perfect moments that you dream about.”

“We're hardly perfect,” David says.

“Don't we still deserve a moment?” Patrick says. “It's Christmas.”

David wraps his arm more securely around Patrick's shoulders, his smooth silver rings brushing chilly over Patrick's back. He pulls his legs up, his feet in their nubbly, recycled wool socks rubbing warmly along Patrick's calves. “It's Christmas,” he repeats dreamily.


End file.
